Great book... VERY easy read! My Grandma Judy, who is an AVID reader recommended it to me. I am really glad she did! I was thoroughly entertained from page one, it was totally clean, and the murder/mystery plot was both intruiging and fullfilling. Set in England, it was fun to interpret English words like 'bonnet' for the 'hood' of a car, etc... Now I want to shake hands with a jockey and go bet on a Steeplechase!! :)

I'm reading Dick Francis' novels according to their published date, so this was his second mystery novel. I must say that compared to his first, "Dead Cert," one can tell that his writing has became better. It seems that he writes with more ease and adds more depth to the characters, scenes and the plot. I've enjoyed reading this book a lot and definitely recommend it to all Francis' afficionados.

I enjoy these stories of jockeys and the horses on the racing circuit. Robb Finn begins to experience success in racing when everything turns cold. He can't win. Things are just too coincidental. He starts to investigate and finds that someone is trying to destroy those who love to ride. He works hard and risks lots to set everything to right again including returning his reputation as a good rider and someone who hasn't lost his nerve. A worthy read as Dick Francis books usually are. I think Robb Finn is a great character. Enjoy this series.

What does it take to break someone's nerve?
Growing up as a non-musician in a world renowned family of famous players, conductors and singers, Rob takes up horse racing.
He is up and coming, drawing attention in all the right places and in one very wrong place. Until he starts to lose - did he lose his nerve? Or are the horses being stopped? A famous television presenter only has to whisper a rumor and no one will have him on their horses.
A great psychological thriller - an exploration of identity and relationships.

One of the best books written by Dick Francis. A man born into a family of musicians finds fame as a jockey, but then things go terribly wrong. What happens next is a typical Dick Francis roller-coaster ride. Highly recommended.

I am a big fan of Dick Francis novels. While they may not be great literature, I love reading them. So I decided to start my reading year with a couple of my favorites. I think Nerve is my very favorite. Both Bonecrack and Nerve as well deserving of 5 star ratings for their genre (in my opinion - which is usually not all that humble so I won't act like it is).

Steplechase jockey Sid Hailey lose a hand as the result of a racing accident. His ex-father-in-law gets him a job with a detective agency where he learns the trade while seemingly manning a desk. He is finalkly in the field investigating horse racing related crimes at the request of the ex-in-law. Dick Fracis creates excitement.

Rob Finn has a love for racing horses but he is odd man out in his family of musicians. He is a jockey on the National Hunt circuit which is one of England’s series of races where horses race while jumping barriers of various types.
Early on he (and many others) are witnesses to a jockey committing a very public suicide at a race course.
"He drove in silence for a while, and then said with an impatient shake of his big head, “No one stands to gain anything by trying to ruin jockeys. It’s nonsense. Pointless.” “I know,” I said. “Pointless.”"

Or is it? Francis lets this story slowly build as we follow Finn’s budding career and his attempts to put things together. This is an early work and my GR friend James Thane and I agree that eventually Francis finds “a formula” for his racing thrillers. But this is an early one that I particularly enjoyed. It has a love interest to balance the violence.

"Most of the time, after so much practice, I could keep my more uncousinly feelings for Joanna well concealed from her; and it was necessary to conceal them because I knew from past experience that if I even approached the subject of love she would begin to fidget and avoid my eyes, and would very soon find a good reason for leaving."

This early effort from author Francis was part of how he built his franchise of thriller/mysteries involving horse racing. Even this early effort show how effectively Francis can tell a story, juggle the elements of mystery, love and thrills…….and equally important – know how to “bring it home.”

Here's the kind of jockey POV that appeals to me: "The utter joy of riding Template lay in the feeling of immense power which he generated. There was no need to make the best of things, on his back; to fiddle and scramble, and hope for others to blunder, and find nothing to spare for a finish. He had enough reserve strength for his jockey to be able to carve up the race as he wished, and there was nothing in racing, I thought, more ecstatic than that."


My previous comments / complaints have been adressed.
Thanks to my GR friend Jan-Maat, much of this has be "adjusted."
I am more amused than frustrated by GR's inability to get this corrected. First they appended my review of Francis' High Stakes to another edition of Nerve. (It is still there)
Then I learned that the site hasn't been able to recognize the difference between the two books.
So, I thought I would write my review on this "other" edition so it would at least be in the right location.
But, did you notice, that it says that this edition was published in 1730...one has to laugh.
RTC

It takes a special kind of passion, a special kind of nerve to do this.



Rob Finn's got it. "Give me a horse and a race to ride it in, and I don't care if I wear silks or...or pajamas. I don't care if there's anyone watching or not. I don't care if I don't earn much money, or if I break my bones, or if I have to starve to keep my weight down. All I care about is racing...racing...and winning, if I can."

Only two years into a career as a steeplechase jockey, Rob has a reputation for being able to handle tough horses--the ones with the bad tempers, the ones who can barely make it round the course without taking a tumble. "I reckoned if I could gain enough experience on bad horses when nothing much was expected of me, it would stand me in good stead if I ever found myself of better ones."

Rob gets his first big break when he's asked to ride a young hurdler for James Axminster, a top-ranked trainer and quintessential professional. The horse, like so many of Rob's mounts, had a vile reputation. "But for some reason the wayward animal and I got on very well." Then Axminster's top jockey takes a bad fall and Rob is drafted to ride the stable's most promising chaser, Template. "He was smooth and steely, and his rocketing spring over the first fence had me gasping...."



But all is not well in the racing world. Bad luck, accidents, and even tragedy seems to be dogging one jockey after another. Is it coincidence? Rob thinks so until it happens to him....suddenly, time after time, his rides turn bad. Favorites suddenly sluggish finishing dead last. And the rumors start....Rob Finn has lost his nerve.

Wonderful pacing, a tight plot, crisp dialog, humor, lots of horsey atmosphere, and a marvelous cast of characters. Dick Francis is a consistent winner.

Content warning PG for violence.

One of my top three. It's got a little romance in it and great revenge.

One of the early Dick Francis mysteries involving jockeys and the world they live in. I found it quite engaging with a little romance and an evil villian. His descriptions of riding a steeplechase horse during a race made my heart race! (no pun intended) and for that I give it 4 stars!

Finally, the first Dick Francis book I ever read comes to Kindle cheap offer while I'm paying attention. And thankfully it still is basically as good as the day I first read it, probably up there with Whip Hand or Hot Money, although I feel like each of those has a more complex mystery at their hearts.

Nerve's great strength is that the villain is revealed about halfway through the book so that the rest of it becomes a sort of tactical game of cat and mouse, meaning there is no margin to how well you remember the ending. While the actual setup is fairly unlikely, both it and the events of the story still feel surprisingly grounded. Whether the psychology behind much of it is accurate isn't something I'm fit to judge but possibly those in the field my disagree with the motivations on display.

Even the love story is decent, although I guess it might give anyone who does have issues with first cousins marrying pause for thought. This is at least an area where I am happy to go with it, unlike, say, Blood Sport's disturbingly normalised age disparity.